The disclosure herein relates generally to methods for displaying notifications.
Many computing systems and applications use notifications as a way to communicate with the user and provide functionalities and feedback. Typical notifications systems, upon determining that a condition is met, output a message that can be displayed to a user. Notification messages can be output, as examples, via email, or via a popup message that is displayed by the user interface of an application or operating system.
One example of a notification is a reminder for a calendar event. The user creates a calendar event in a calendar application. The calendar application is configured to deliver a reminder for the event some time before the event starts. This can be useful to help the user to recall that the event is happening and plan to reach the location of the event on time. Another example of a notification can be a task reminder that is output by a task management system.
Many notifications are not effective, in that they are not displayed to and/or perceived by the user at the correct time. As one example, a notification might be ineffective because it is delivered in the midst of many other notifications and is not noticed. As another example, a notification might be ineffective because the user is away from the device that is delivering the notification when the notification is triggered. As another example, the notification might be ineffective because the device that should deliver the notification to the user is off (e.g., because lack of power or because the device is silenced or turned off). As another example, the notification might be ineffective because the notification is delivered via a network (e.g. the internet), and the device that should notify the user is not connected to the network (e.g., the device is in a geographical location where the network is not available). In these types of situations, the notification may not be delivered to the user at the appropriate time, causing the information contained in the notification to become completely useless. For instance, receiving a reminder for an event after the event has happened is not useful.